President Simon’s letter to the Lehigh community on the CORE report

One month ago, we shared the report created by Lehigh’s Commission on Residential Environment, or CORE, which included a number of recommendations for the university community to consider to improve campus culture and the student residential experience. These recommendations, along with the full report, were posted on our website and shared with all of you.

Many of you took the time to read through the report and to offer your perspectives on the report and its recommendations. We received more than 70 written responses, which were thoughtful and grounded in a desire to have future generations of students share the full benefits of the Lehigh experience. Most of the feedback focused on the recommendations related to social policy and the report’s proposed requirement that all students live in university housing for their first three years.

The CORE recommendations are the result of more than a year of work by 60 faculty, staff and students, and are intended to form the basis of a broad and open discussion that will begin with the start of the academic year. We will consider all the feedback — along with the financial implications of different possibilities, Lehigh’s long-range strategic goals, and our role in our local community — before any final decisions are made.

We encourage you to continue to remain engaged by accessing the report and offering your comments at the Goblet post We Want Your Feedback or by emailing comments to corereport@lehigh.edu. We look forward to continuing the conversation with you throughout this process.